Wrest from the all
by Peridot-Plath
Summary: We knew it would end someday, Aragorn'


* * *

Wrest from the all-encompassing radius that defines time—beautiful terror, and cast out into chilly eternal rest of rippling dawns. And there is more than the famed elf-eye can perceive, can you place infinity any better than in the arms of the sea? That blue reined only by the lie of the horizons and the undulating fall and rise of breathing, and perhaps in some dank grotto, where the secrets of immortality sleep on…?

* * *

do not ask me for words 

for I know none that are truth

that I might leave what was

as branch-dry syllables. frost bitten earth underfoot

perhaps, deepen this sundered garden of gray

from what once lingered as now, leaves

* * *

The sky is heavy upon quotidian morn, such a morning—morning upon morning, and still not so the follower of endless days. Russet overtones murmur the subtlety of today's sunrise, and then the gray, so interminable, correlating to age, rain, harsh slashes that are the merest sly drizzle, my mind amplifies. And so, this genial wind scudding from the ocean carries salty spume, is a long lamentable blast in my mind—I would fall, susceptible as dictated by lore, if only for some other mystery, fate can cipher such symbols as they cast them, I cannot. I will not. 

'tis dawn, two white arrows, discreet in their urgings of direction, gulls. Sweet cacophony of their calls, they allow me respite from the incident of yesterday's passing that left me bereft of an anchor in this earthy geography.

So I am left wordless.

But it is harder on you, this life exalts you, on white buildings, a countryful of peasanter.

How cruel that Gondor should be so near that sea, I feel my metaphor speaks louder, enmeshed with the visions of eyes and ears. And in this sea, on calmer days, I find I might not be the only one agaze on insubstantial dreams.

Unrestful dreams of this peaceful future broke early this morning: I faced their coagulations; the unfamiliar face next to me.

Perhaps I—we should have born in different lives. But fate is such a twisted wood--another metaphor sly on the double-meanings—what was might never have been.

I can't help but think now, that brutal apathy, where wormwood and honey taste the same, might be less painful than ephemeral paradise, only to face the oblivion of darkness after.

I must not. 'tis an insult to us both to say such a thing.

* * *

How contrary, to contemplate on the dawn after my coronation, of yesterday, that belongs to me as a simple man and one who knew me in the greatest magnitude—elf, whom I knew as such. 

I will possibly dwell here on this abyss of my mind when my thoughts should be elsewhere. Strange for a king. A King.

So I re-trace the rims of that seemingly longter.

How cruel that Gondor should be so near that sea, I feel my metaphor speaks louder, enmeshed with the visions of eyes and ears. And in this sea, on calmer days, I find I might not be the only one agaze on insubstantial dreams.

Unrestful dreams of this peaceful future broke early this morning: I faced their coagulations; the unfamiliar face next to me.

Perhaps I—we should have born in different lives. But fate is such a twisted wood--another metaphor sly on the double-meanings—what was might never have been.

I can't help but think now, that brutal apathy, where wormwood and honey taste the same, might be less painful than ephemeral paradise, only to face the oblivion of darkness after.

I must not. 'tis an insult to us both to say such a thing.

* * *

How contrary, to contemplate on the dawn after my coronation, of yesterday, that belongs to me as a simple man and one who knew me in the greatest magnitude—elf, whom I knew as such. 

I will possibly dwell here on this abyss of my mind when my thoughts should be elsewhere. Strange for a king. A King.

So I re-trace the rims of that seemingly long-ago time, that we—he—filled the room with purpose.

He was always like that; I will be rendered unable to forget; and when the sound of waves lean into the wind, genial gale, I find myself making the infinite silence, undertone beneath all this song, a likeness of his voice.

Before the ceremony, all unnecessary pomp and splendour for foreign eyes to see, he granted me what I wished not.

'We've shared blackest night. Morning casts her certain slant of light.'

His voice is tremulous. Sunlight on waters, but now they more resemble discordant notes, cords being fumbled with, the player finding them hard to read.

'what comes our way?'

'the inevitable'

'and we so foolishly agreed to let go when the stroke fell'

'not foolish, we merely underestimated our hearts... to be less …_delicate'_

'I would not have you any other way'

'not now, Aragorn'

'why ever not? To do otherwise would be to lie!'

Turbid waters rise behind my eyes, sullen swirling eddies of the dank. He sees this, and recognizes it, how not to acknowledge the other half of your own splintered heart?

Pale slivers on my arm, still clothed in my Ranger garb—see, I had not changed until today , therefore I relish the yester—his hand is a slender agile one, and immortal, perhaps the greatest bane of them all, he says.

'you cannot want to leave me'

Plaintive, I knew the inflections in my voice; I shudder to think they were intentional, meant to hurt.

He is unwavering, still the elf, ever the infallible one. He has denied this, like I did to his similar suggestion.

'I do not. And I cannot,'

And the eyes purge me as he looks up once more, I see what I always have, age, wisdom, life, the blue, vaulted roundness where it meets the slow-waning gleam of the dusktime sea

He continues:

'which is why I am letting you finish this with myself as the undying witness.'

I am stunned; I see something I have never seen before—pleading. And so I yield.

'I consent…to finishing this'

'thank you.'

He leaves a very obvious halt behind those flat, empty vowels.

* * *

outsiders will never understand 

the reverse diurnal rhythms of a bat

black and stealthy—piece borne of night and quiet

how to question; that it loves a more subtle slender light

and the moon is unwavering

un-aging

it draws the sea to its mellow _fea_

always less harsh than the sun

* * *

It is only now, contemplating along the trammeled path of a new life, that I fully perceive sorrow as true sorrow, Denethor was warped by this; he died many years ago. 

His eyes were the mirror I was too young and callous to delve into, he was a wraith, a shadow, mounted on the sham of his role as leader, I do not fault him. The study he used speaks of this, the faint threnody of uncertainty, deceit, and a raging of the heart, burning with cold-fire. Between the great stone ramparts is a void, howling, and the screams left unbidden by blindness.

It is just a room. The table is empty, old documents on the shelves, not unkempt, but the air weeps, and it is brittle, glass, time slows here, in inspection of every ripple, the barest dissension.

He weathered a great burden. It was writ on his brow, I now discover on revising memories.

At the end of it all, we are the same—men, not all weak-hearted, but ultimately tragic, each in our own way.

The desk is scarred, the dry scratching of quill on parchment, and dust motes strung quivering in the honey dipping in through the open window. It seems alien now, no errant parchment, except—

I spy a note seemingly carelessly deposited, but still cryptic in its shadowed corner of the table, weighed down by a broken arrow shaft, feathered, with the sharp tip removed—a sign of peace?

Of course I know this and all that it says, so trenchant and wise though weightless, and oddly childish, unfinished.

The note written in flowing Sindarin script; not Arwen's, nor Elrond's.

_Remember me when I am gone away,  
Gone far away into the silent land;  
When you can no more hold me by the hand,  
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.  
Remember me when no more day by day.  
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:  
Only remember me; you understand  
It will be late to counsel then or pray.  
Yet if you should forget me for a while  
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:  
For if the darkness and corruption leave  
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,  
Better by far you should forget and smile  
Than that you should remember and be sad._

It is unsigned. It does not need to be, I know the writer's identity, and more of that than most people who claim to do.

It is perhaps the last two lines that resound to me, the most gracious, accepting of being abandoned in the past left for dead. I would rather not have him crumble into what time fails not to bring: naught but dust and bones.

He belongs elsewhere, where dreams border and mingle with the solidity of the world as whole.

* * *

A chambermaid spies the king in royal livery exit the study, silent solemn place, and turn, down the corner, soft steps, robes rustle in the buoyant sea wind. He is gone.

* * *

As I left the tome room I noticed an indiscreet figure almost disappearing around the corner, he looks so different in formal garb, I suppose we all do, but he is still him, mere physicality is trivial, it matters not. I will always recognize that silhouette, the sunlight in his hair is a beacon, that was a comment I had made a long time ago. Back then, in more carefree days. 

I hurried to him, robes are not terribly convenient for haste, one of the other things I regret about leaving my old life behind. I knew it would be a bittersweet acceptance.

'thank you'

A smile, so honest an expression, I will miss it.

'I know'

And it's true. Because he does know, we both do.


End file.
